This is, without a doubt, one of the best sequences that Quentin Tarantino has ever directed. Along with the perfect visuals of Shoshanna getting ready for the premiere, Tarantino makes perfect use of Theme From Cat People, reinventing the song from a somewhat silly horror theme to an anthem of revolution and revenge.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 60th birthday to director/screenwriter/cultural institution, Quentin Tarantino!
Here are….
4 Shots From 4 Quentin Tarantino Films
Pulp Fiction (1994, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Andrzej Sekuła)
Kill Bill (2003, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Robert Richardson)
Inglourious Basterds (2009, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Robert Richardson)
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Robert Richardson)
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to screen icon Pam Grier! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Pam Grier Films
Coffy (1973, dir by Jack Hill, DP: Paul Lohmann)
Foxy Brown (1974, dir by Jack Hill, DP: Brick Marquard)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983, dir by Jack Clayton, DP: Stephen H. Burum)
Jackie Brown (1997, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Guillermo Navarro)
The following was posted on 4/6/2007 from my LiveJournal on Grindhouse (which is celebrating it’s 15th Anniversary). I’ll admit I respect Death Proof a bit more now than I did back then:
Gotta write fast. Have to jump into shower and head for work.
I got into the movie theatre at about 8pm, and spent the hour talking with a pair of film students from the School of Visual Arts. At 9 (an hour before the movie), the rest of the sold out crowd appeared. I was officially 3rd in line. Sweet. 🙂 I didn’t my preferred seat (the single one on the right reserved for patrons coming in with someone in a wheelchair), but did get a seat in the empty row (meaning I could stretch my legs, even better).
The short of it: Grindhouse is paying one low price for 2 bad movies, on purpose. You get 3 great built in trailers, and two mini movies. Between the two mini movies, I loved “Planet Terror” (the Rodriguez one) more than “Death Proof” (The Tarantino film), simply because Death Proof had too much of Tarantino’s conversational style that all of his films have. It’s like you’re listening to a conversation that absolutely doesn’t tie itself to any of the storyline’s major points. It’s just “cool” stuff, but I literally almost fell asleep until Kurt Russell showed up on screen. I think that if one knows to expect this from Tarantino, it comes across better. It’s like watching both Kill Bill volumes back to back. The first one’s cool and action packed, and the second one has some action (the chase scene alone in Death Proof had me wondering how they did that), but is so slow before getting there, you want to sigh.
Being a Charmed Fan, it was great to see Rose McGowan again, and there were so many cameos to laugh at. Fergie has a cameo, and Michael Biehn’s (“Hicks” from Aliens, Navy Seals) even in this. Where did they dig up these guys?
Grindhouse is easily a party film. I’d go see it again in the theatre, but I don’t see myself getting the DVD. It takes you back about a good 30 years, and does that really well. There are missing reels, serious jump cuts in the film and the sound sometimes cuts out. 🙂 In that sense, it’s really beautiful. The audience laughed and applauded, though there were some that at the end were like “Man, that sucked.” In the 60’s and 70’s, Grindhouse movies were pretty bad. I guess it’s like watching one of those old Hammer films, mixed in with a cheap horror flick. You have to walk into this movie not expecting “The Departed” for it to work. Just have fun with what you’re seeing and remember, this is what your parents sometimes saw in the movies (it should be noted that my parents went to something of a Grindhouse once – the movie they went to see was Night of the Living Dead. The other movie that was in the show was John Carpenter’s “Halloween”, which freaked my Dad out).
The music in particular is really great. Robert Rodriguez, Chingon, and a few friends come up with a sound for Planet Terror that’s in essence a John Carpenter like sound. If you have access to the Itunes Music Store, give it a listen (I bought it). Plus, if you’re a fan of some of the older movies out there, you’ll find references to some of Carpenter’s films in there (for example, one of the songs from “Escape from New York” is actually used in the film). The same occurs with the soundtrack from “Creepshow” – The story with the drowned couple. There are also tons of older Tarantino/Rodriguez references in there. One fellow actually yelled out a line, word for word, from what was on screen. It took me a second to realize the line came from “From Dusk Till Dawn”. Sweet.
The in betwen trailers are absolutely fantastic. If I were to get the DVD, it would probably be for this reason alone. You can tell that Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and Eli Roth (Hostel) really had fun with their pieces.
So, Grindhouse is worth seeing in theatre at least once with a bunch of friends, but know what you’re walking into. The movie can get gross at times and no young kid should even be brought near to this (we got carded to actually get into the theatre, and a Weinstein Rep. was on hand after the film to let us take surveys). Also before the movies, one of the teaser trailers is for Rob Zombie’s “Halloween”. I haven’t been so excited for a horror film like this since Zack Snyder’s version of “Dawn of the Dead”. This looks really good, and I’m wondering what Michael Myers is going to look like when someone like Tyler Mane (Sabretooth from the first X-Men movie) is playing him. That’s going to be creepy.
In honor of Quentin Tarantino’s birthday, today’s scene of the day is the opening coffeeshop scene from Tarnatino’s directorial debut, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs.
While Tarantino will always be better appreciated as a director than an actor, it does seem somewhat appropriate that the very first lines in the very first Tarantino film are spoken by Tarantino himself. There’s also something undeniably likable about Tarantino laughing at the sound of his own dialogue.
From Reservoir Dogs:
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is not just Oscar Sunday! It’s also Quentin Tarantino’s 59th birthday! Since Tarantino is one of the favorite filmmakers of this site, it only makes sense to celebrate with….
4 Shots From 4 Quentin Tarantino Films
Reservoir Dogs (1992, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Andrzej Sekuła)
Pulp Fiction (1994, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Andrzej Sekuła)
Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Robert Richardson)
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Robert Richardson)
Be sure to check out my picks for 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011!
Lisa Marie’s 2021 In Review:
Today is Quentin Tarantino’s 59 birthday. In order to celebrate the occasion, here’s Brad Pitt beating up a hippie.
This scene, of course, is from my favorite Tarantino film, 2019’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. While some may say that Cliff goes overboard on the hippie, you should understand that this is no ordinary hippie. This hippie is meant to be Steve “Clem” Grogan, a real-life member of the Manson Family who, in 1969, murdered an actor and stuntman named Donald “Shorty” Shea. Shea, who worked on the Spahn Rannch, had apparently once taken Grogan under his wing but, when it was decided the Shea knew too much about Manson’s crimes and that he was a threat to Manson’s control of ranch owner George Spahn, the order apparently went out that Shea had to die. While Manson, Grogan and Manson’s second-in-command, Bruce Davis, were the only three people convicted of Shea’s murder, it’s felt that they were probably aided by Tex Watson (played by Austin Butler in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood). In real life, Grogan was sentenced to death for Shea’s murder, though his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, with the judge reportedly saying that Grogan was obviously too stupid and too stoned to decide to murder Shea on his own.
The 18 year-old Grogan was a high school drop out and was also nicknamed Scramblehead, due to even the members of the Manson Family considering him to be abnormally dumb. Grogan, reportedly, wrecked several cars, including one owned by Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and, shortly before the murders, he was arrested for exposing himself. That said, it’s also been suggested that Grogan was never as dumb as he pretended to be. According to Ed Sanders’s book, The Family, Grogan did turn his life around once he was locked far away from the rest of the Family and free from Manson’s influence. A model prisoner, he eventually led the police to the location of Shea’s body and he was paroled in 1985. To date, he is the only one of the Manson murderers to have been released from prison. (Bruce Davis, who was also convicted of killing Shea, has been ruled suitable for parole six times over the past ten years but, each time, the decision has been overturned by California’s governor. He was mostly recently ruled suitable for parole on January 22nd of this year but Governor Newsom has yet to announce whether he will be blocking the decision.) Grogan is 69 years old now and, as of a few years ago, he was working as a musician in the Los Angeles area. Regardless of whether Clem Grogan turned his life around or not, considering what happened to Shorty Shea, it does seem appropriate that Once Upon A Time In Hollywood sees Clem getting his ass kicked by a stuntman.
In fact, Cliff’s entire visit to the Spahn Ranch is one of the best moments in Tarantino’s entire filmography. It plays out like a combination of a horror flick and a western and there’s just enough odd humor tossed in to keep the audience especially nervous. Given just how creepy the entire sequence is, there’s something very cathartic about Cliff’s refusal to play any games with Clem and the other hippies. Cliff’s refusal to even let Clem wipe the blood off his face feels especially satisfying, in an odd sort of way.
Anyway, a happy birthday to Quentin Tarantino! Last year, I observed Tarantino’s birthday by ranking all of his film, in order from worst to best. You check that out by clicking here!
After decades of soundtracks that established him as one of the greatest of our modern composers, Ennio Morricone would win his first (and, sad to say, only) competitive Oscar in 2016. (Morricone had previously been awarded an honorary Oscar for his overall body of work.) He won that Oscar for his score for Quentin Tarantino’s 8th film, 2015’s The Hateful Eight.
As we are now winding down our tribute to Morricone, it only seems appropriate to share a piece of the soundtrack. From the Hateful Eight, here is Neve:
Previous Entries In Our Tribute To Morricone:
Today is Harvey Keitel’s 81st birthday.
Harvey Keitel is one of those actors who has given so many great performances that it’s difficult to pick which one is his best. He’s almost always great, even when the film sometimes isn’t. That said, I’ll always have a lot of affection for the character of Winston Wolfe, the cleaner that Keitel played in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
Keitel doesn’t show up until the final third of Pulp Fiction but once he does, he pretty much takes over the entire film. For me, though, my favorite Winston Wolfe moment comes at the end of his story, when he says goodbye to John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson and essentially reveals himself to be kind of an old-fashioned, almost dorky (if impeccably dressed) guy.
Happy birthday, Harvey Keitel!
Through the Shattered Lens 